[0:00]If you click on this video, you know that not all childhood trauma is obvious or even looks the same. You don't have to remember something terrible happening in your childhood for it still to be affecting the way that you love today. So in today's video, we are going to break down number one, what childhood trauma actually is. So that you can become crystal clear as to whether or not this happened to you. Number two, you're going to learn that trauma isn't always about what happened. Sometimes it's about what didn't happen. Then we're going to go into exactly how trauma does actually affect the way that you love and what the symptoms will be in your relationship. And at the very end of this video, I'm going to take you through some personal questions as to whether or not this is affecting you today, so that you really clearly understand what to do next. If you're new here, my name is Thais Gibson. I'm a counselor and a relationship coach and my entire life's work is dedicated to helping people build the best relationships of their life and heal from their childhood. So I'm happy you're here.
[1:02]One of the first things is we have to figure out what trauma actually is and really define it. Trauma is actually something that you couldn't properly understand. And so you instead make meaning out of it, stored this subconscious meaning, and then your entire nervous system reorganizes itself around this. Let me give you an example. Let's say, for example, that you grew up in an environment where you have an experience of constantly feeling criticized. Maybe your parents are criticizing you because they're literally thinking that this is how they're preparing you for life and making you into a better person. So you get an A on your paper and they're like, where's the A+? Well, if you get a lot of that repeated messaging over time, you might make that mean. No matter what I do, I'm never good enough. You store that subconscious piece of meaning, and you go through life moving as if no matter what you do, you're never good enough. I like to give the analogy to people in this case as a bear in the woods. When something's painful for us or we can't make sense of it, or it feels threatening, we store it. Just like if you went into the woods tomorrow and you saw a bear and you ran away from it, but the next day you have to go back into the same woods. Well, as soon as the trees move or anything changes in the woods, you're basically going to be bracing for that bear to come. And so what happens is even though trauma doesn't have to be in this really big extreme, we can have small T trauma. Where it's like you just grew up in an environment where you're not sure of what's going on around you, you get a little bit hurt by something, you store it, and then you project that everywhere. And maybe that means that as an adult, when you try in a relationship, but you don't get the validation or reassurance you're hoping for, you're like, see, I'm not good enough. No matter what I do, it's not good enough. So trauma, yes, can be the very big things that happen. The abuse, or the really scary situations you might have been exposed to, but small T trauma, if it's repeated enough over time, can actually change the way we move in the world and the way we relate to other people as adults as well. So this brings me to our second point here, which is that trauma isn't always about what happened. Sometimes it's about what didn't happen. One of my favorite quotes is by somebody named Dr. Gaber Matik. And he says, trauma is the things that happened that shouldn't have. That's the obvious stuff. That's your bear in the woods, you feeling not good enough, or rejected or abandoned, or unloved in your childhood, those painful events that took place, and sometimes that were big T traumas that were really intense or traumatic, and those ones you know. But trauma are also the things that didn't happen that should have happened. For example, if you go through chronic emotional neglect as a child, in a perfect world, you should have had parents who were available to you and who were supportive for you. Or if you grew up where your parents weren't really around, in a perfect world you should have had parents who were attuned to you and protected you. But if we're missing these fundamental things that we need as children, that's also traumatic too. So I want to break this down, okay? I want you to ask yourself if in your relationships you fall into one of these three patterns or categories. Because these three patterns and categories are basically going to help you understand what kind of trauma you did experience in a relationship. Was it small T trauma or big T trauma? How extreme was it? And how is this affecting the way that I love as an adult? First set of patterns is that as an adult, you become quite anxious or needy in relationships. You want a lot of certainty, you need a lot of reassurance, and if somebody pulls away from you, you may find yourself going into this panic mode or overdrive to try to get as close to that person as possible and maintain proximity. Fe males will find that if somebody doesn't respond to you in a timely manner or get back to you, you're like, wait, are they okay? Did something bad happen to them? Are they alive? Are they in an accident? And you start projecting and thinking of all of these worst case scenarios about them. If that's you, there's a pretty strong chance that you may be anxiously attached in relationships, especially if that's a common set of themes in all of your relationships and in all of your relationship history. Anxious attachment styles have big wounds because of big T or small T trauma in childhood. Their usual big wounds or fears are the fear of being not good enough, unloved, abandoned, alone, rejected, disliked, excluded. These are huge things that fundamentally drive the way they operate in relationships. And in that case, those are your triggers, those are essential your pieces of relationship baggage that you are carrying literally from small or big T trauma in your childhood into your adult life and all of your relationships. And you can play some of these out. For example, what do you do when you're afraid of being abandoned? Do you cling? Do you call a lot? Do you text frequently? Do you stress or struggle when somebody isn't getting back to you in a timely manner? What do you do when you fear being excluded? Do you feel like, oh my gosh, I get really upset and hurt and can't focus on anything else? Or what do you do if you feel like you're disliked in a situation? You know, a lot of these things will cause you to ruminate like crazy and prevent you from being able to sit and be focused and present in your own life. And in those cases, that's literally your childhood trauma affecting the way that you love as an adult. But there's two other major patterns. Do you constantly get triggered by the same things, no matter what kind of relationship you're in? Maybe you get afraid of being abandoned in a friendship, but also in a romantic relationship. Or maybe you're always fearing that people will trap or try to control you in any kind of relationship dynamic, but especially in romantic relationship. If this sounds like you, chances are core wounds are kind of causing a lot of destruction to your life. You may not be consciously aware of them, but they are probably running the show at the subconscious level of mind, which by the way, is responsible for 95% or more of all of your beliefs and thoughts and emotions and actions. And in fact, these unresolved triggers will be the glass ceilings that you experience time and time again in all of your relationships, and they'll even pull into multiple other areas of life, like into your career. If you do not resolve them, you will feel stuck, and you will feel like you are repeating the same types of traumatic patterns in your life, not knowing how to get out of them or find a solution. But these are very solvable problems, and that's why today I'm sharing with you a free gift that you can literally claim below. You can take a seven-day free trial to the personal development school, and along with that, you get to keep our core wounds bundle for life. This will literally take you through so many different core wounds, help you understand where core wounds come from, how they affect us, and then how, most importantly, to rewire them. These are examples of some of the online classes that we teach, and I can't wait to share this with you so that you can really start understanding your internal world and how to massively change in a way that allows you to build the best relationships of your life, starting with yourself. If you're not the anxious attachment style in relationships, you might instead be the dismissive avoidance. The dismissible avoidance in many ways is kind of the opposite. This individual usually grows up with a lot of hyper independence. In other words, they usually grow up more on that side of trauma where they didn't get the things they needed. If you remember that analogy I gave to you, I said trauma are the things that happened that shouldn't have happened, like abuse. But trauma are also the things that didn't happen that should have happened. Dismissible avoidance grow up with a lot of the type of trauma where they don't have anybody around enough. People are not present and really helping them and supporting them in the way that they need. Parents are not often attuned to them emotionally and checking in with them and how they're feeling. And because children in their own childhood deeply need that, children literally to move through behavioral stages of development in healthy ways, they literally need to feel seen, and they need to feel special, and they need to feel safe. And if you're not getting some of those needs, well, then your version of how your childhood affects the way you love as an adult, is usually that you end up in situations where you feel like I want to not need anybody. Because if I just don't need anybody, I don't have to go back and experience what I felt in childhood where I did need somebody, I did feel vulnerable, and those needs were simply not met. And so as an adult, what you'll often see is dismissible avoidant attachment styles, they're deeply affected by their childhood and the way that they love. Usually through trying to keep everybody at arm's length, trying to not let people in too deeply in romantic relationships, trying to sort of reject people before they get rejected first, and often convincing themselves of why they don't need somebody. Or even when they are in a relationship with somebody, trying to find that person's flaws as a way of feeling like, okay, if the person does lead me or doesn't work out, I'm fine, because look at all the flaws they have anyways. So dismissive avoidance, because they went through a lot of unmet needs in childhood, that's their own form of trauma. They go into relationships assuming their needs again will not get met as an adult, and they create distance in order to foster a sense of safety and control emotionally. Our last pattern here is the fearful avoidant attachment style. Fearful avoidant attachment styles, they usually go through more big T trauma in childhood. And this often looks like them being in situations where literally they had tremendous chaos. Maybe they had a parent who was an alcoholic, or both parents who were in active addiction using drugs regularly. Or perhaps they had a parent with narcissistic personality disorder, who was loving one day and really mean and cruel the next. In these types of situations, what you're going to see is that a child grows up not being able to trust their environment. They're like, I can't trust my parents. I don't know what's going on here, they're chaotic all the time, I never know how they're going to behave. And they go into this really up-regulated state and hyper vigilant state as a way of trying to predict anything that could happen in their environment so that they can stay three steps ahead of it and keep themselves safe. Fearful avoidant as a result of having some okay experiences or good experiences with love. For example, maybe a parent was an alcoholic, and one day they came home with a few drinks in them and they were loving and nice. Another day that parent was mean and cruel because they drank way too much, or if you had a parent who was a narcissist, and one day they were very loving because they were in a good mood. Another day they were mean and cruel, you get wired to have competing experiences with love, which really confuses your mind. In other words, one day you might think love is a good thing, and then another day you might think, well, this person could really hurt me because I've been deeply hurt in my childhood. So the fearful avoidant becomes both anxious and avoidant in relationships. They pinball back and forth. They're very ambivalent. They're the type of partner as an adult who's like, come get close to me, and when you get closer, like get back, you're too close, stay away, I don't trust you. And so they end up being very hot and cold, back and forth. They have more big T trauma, obvious trauma in their childhood, but as an adult, they feel very disregulated by relationships. They often feel like they lose themselves in relationships because they're in all of the emotional storms in their mind, as soon as somebody gets too close. And in all of these types of cases, what you're actually doing is storing the threatening experiences you had in your childhood. You've given those experiences meaning, like I'm going to be trapped or betrayed or alone or abandoned. You've stored that meaning, and you project it onto all of the people around you. So the moment if you're anxious, somebody doesn't text you back fast enough, you're like, see, they're abandoning me. Or the moment that somebody's trying to move too quickly in a relationship, you're like, you're going to try to trap me. Stay back. Or the moment that somebody's behavior isn't perfectly what makes sense to you, you're like, see, they're going to betray me. And in all of these cases, yes, your childhood is affecting the way that you love if you're any of those three insecure attachment styles. And what I want you to know and understand is after seeing all of those symptoms that show up in the relationship, I want you to know that your attachment style is simply designed to protect you. And anything that you learned can also be unlearned. You're not born with an attachment style, it gets conditioned into you through repetition and emotion, and you can literally rewire your neural pathways and change to heal and become securely attached, no matter where you are. And that's what we do on this channel. I'm here to help you with the right tools to build secure attachment, which is exactly what I made this channel for. Especially as somebody who myself was the fearful avoidant attachment style and really plugged into that deep inner work and saw profound results in my own life. And now, that's why I share what I do here on this channel with others. So I hope this was helpful for you today and I hope you made a lot more sense of everything that you might have experienced in your upbringing and how it affects you and the way that you love now.
